The problem of fingerprint identification often involves a comparison of a query fingerprint with a data base of stored or file fingerprints. In the domain of fingerprints authentication, this problem is also known as one-to-many matching, fingerprint identification and fingerprint indexing. On the other hand, if a person's claimed identity is to be confirmed or denied by comparing his or her fingerprint with a single reference fingerprint, this problem is typically referred to as fingerprint verification or one-to-one matching.
Since one-to-one matching of the query fingerprint with every fingerprint in the data base of file fingerprints would consume a lot of time and resources, it is not a practical solution to the problem of one-to-many matching. Typically, many one-to-many fingerprint matching systems would have 1,000 to 100,000 fingerprints filed therein, thus making the time and resource requirements inhibitive. One-to-many fingerprint matching can be further complicated because of a number of problems, including the fact that two fingerprints from the same finger may have only a small overlap or common area, and may be approximately related by a rotation and/or translation.
In at least preferred embodiments, the present invention seeks to provide a novel method and system for one-to-many fingerprint matching which can be implemented in software on simple computing facilities like desktop computers or servers in a resource and time efficient manner.